


Patterns in the Snow

by spaceleviathan



Series: Family of Frost [3]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Necessary OCs, Norse Myths & Legends, familial bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki had settled into an unfortunate pattern: He'd love, he'd lose, he'd leave, he'd return. Lather, rinse, repeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patterns in the Snow

Loki first found America in 1000 BC. He'd accompanied the travellers to the new land, happily settled down in Vinland, and didn't leave his modest life until his father appeared personally with a flash of light on an eight-legged horse, scaring belief back into the waning faith and dazzling the mortals with his might.

Odin put on such a show that Loki was able to slip away without being noticed, leading his father on a pointless chase across the small realm purely out of spite until Frigga put a stop to his childishness.

"Honestly, boy," she scolded, made all the worse by the hand she gently pressed to his cheek. "What is so important down there?"

Nothing. And that was just it. Upon Midgard he'd once had a life, a wife and his children, but they were chased down, captured, with Angrboda slaughtered as she tried to reach out to her offspring. Their young were taken from him, and Loki had since been flickering in and out of mourning, hopping between the realms in a mix of hatred and forced forgetfulness, until the lands which had once been his had been threatened by the growing Roman empire. It had been Thor, of all people, whohad been the one to pull Loki from his misery and drag him down to keep the branches of Yggdrasil safe from the invading Roman armies.

The Vikings, in all their senseless violence, were the only mortal on in the nine realms who so closely echoed the inhabitants of Asgard, so were therefore the only ones which Odin felt could be trusted to live as close to Yggdrasil as they did. The Romans were not those people, especially since their new-found religion had wiped clean any respect for pagan beliefs and rituals - the same ones which kept the roots thriving under Midgard soil. They needed to be kept away.

After they had won, which of course they had with the gods at their back, Loki had opted to stay. He remembered the wonders he'd found down on Midgard, even living isolated as he had been with his quite obviously non-human family. He recalled the joys the humans found in life, despite their fleeting chance at it. He wondered, occasionally, what the humans would manage to do if only they were given a couple more years.

Since then, two hundred mortal years on, there had been little need for Loki in Asgard. He'd imagined many had breathed out a sigh of relief when he'd left, seemingly for good. That was due to the prophecies.

The prophecies had immerged from the Norns the same week the warriors of Asgard travelled down the Bifrost to track down his family - it was because of those horrific murmurings that his wife had been killed and his children ripped from his arms. Personally, Loki had not taken to believing what he considered to be nothing more than a single visible thread picked out from thousands of possible futures, but others were not quite so lenient.

Despite not having needed him for the last two centuries, a situation had recently immerged; one which, unsurprisingly, involved his idiot of a big brother. Loki was for some reason expected to help his family sort it out. That was why he had been taken from his new settlement on Earth, and why his father had appeared before the villagers so ostentatiously.  

All Loki could gather in those first few moments after returning home was that Thor was senseless, Baldr was fretting, Frigga was furious and Odin was disappointed. Loki almost immediately wished he was back on Midgard, where things were so much easier.

\--

He returned to America in the early 1500s with his human lover, Torgeir. They wanted to be alone and unknown, so they had hopped on a ship and set sail for the New World. Or, for Loki, a fairly old one.

Loki was not a patient god. Moreover, he was one prone to boredom. Sometimes, quite especially after more than four centuries, the realm eternal became something he was all too used to. It ceased to be an awe-inspiring sight, nor a world which excited him to be a part of. The landscape stayed the same, the skies stayed the same, each day stayed the same, and inevitably, so did the people. Loki was not like them; content to live as they lived, and found his pleasures in other realms where things were  a little less permanent.

Midgard was the best place for a significant lack of intransience. Since he had discovered that it wasn't as dreary as other gods made it out to be, Loki had also discovered how special it was.

And then there were the people. Oh, the human race. Loki was constantly stuck between speechless with wonder and speechless with horror when regarding humanity. One person, within the same breath, could prove to do the most evil, and yet do the most good at the _exact_ same time. The one thing you could say about the Æsir was that they at least stuck to a single path: if they were going to kill you, they certainly weren't going to be polite about it.

On the other hand, the humans impressed Loki by trying to tell the victims this was their own fault; whether this was to rationalise their murderous actions to the soon-to-be-dead or to themselves had never been made clear to Loki, but somehow he found beauty in such a heinous act. Loki couldn't recall a time when a member of any other race had tried to inflict that psychological torture upon a fellow doomed to die.

But then Loki realised that someone had, to Loki himself, all those years ago, and blindly Loki had accepted it as truth.

 _It's your fault they have to be taken away_ , Odin had told him. _She didn't have to die if it wasn't for what you have done_.

After that, Loki took the time to stay away from Asgard as his temper cooled, and instead sank further into the idea that maybe these tiny, weak little bugs crawling upon the lower branches of Yggdrasil were not really so different from the gods which strolled through the high leaves of the great world tree.

He'd met Torgeir in Norway in 1488. He was a warrior and a hunter, and had managed to track down Loki when Loki did not want to be found. An impressive feat, as Loki was no stranger to hiding on Midgard. Not even the hunters of Asgard found it easy to find him once he'd taken to concealing himself, and they oftentimes had the watchful eye of Heimdall on their side.

Torgeir had assumed he was a strange new animal from the way Loki took to moving abnormally from tree to tree and through the wind with the medium of his magic. He'd abandoned shoes upon the midday heat of high summer, and that had been several hours previously before Loki realised he was being followed. By now Loki was not so much tired, despite his gasping breath when he stole a moment to catch up with himself, as he was annoyed that he would find trouble on this day of all days.

Loki was a name well known among these areas, and as the years flew by and the stories warped from generation to generation, the truth about Loki was twisted until even Loki could not recognise himself in the humans' tales and could hardly stand to socialise. He was at great risk talking to these people, lest anyone discover his true identity.

Unfortunately for him, it had not been two days prior that the village he had been lodging in for a short time had discovered the truth, and the people had been so scared of the bad omens they believed followed after him that they'd run him out of the area.

Strange, that a god be chased away from where he chose to reside, but not something that would surprise many if they saw the arsenal of pointy things they had brandished upon the Áss; things which, in such numbers, would not have a hard time in removing him from his life.

So, the sudden introduction of a curious hunter into Loki's life, now of all times, so soon after a previous and tiring chase, had Loki furious at humanity for what wasn't the first time and what wouldn't be the last.

Usually, Loki would have spared at least moment of those many hours to be amazed at the skill the human displayed and the ability to keep up with the sorcerer hopping from place to place through the breeze itself, but he was far too irate and weary to muster up the capacity to be appreciative of his enemy's cleverness.

Eventually it became too much for Loki when, even as the sun started to sink down into the trees, the hunter showed no sign of ceasing his trailing.

The prince suddenly came down from his perch amongst the branches and glared furiously upon this mortal, who at least had enough decency to look startled upon Loki's abrupt appearance.

"Stop following me." The god hissed, but the human just kept on staring at him, wide-eyed and astonished,  not reacting to the threatening tones, nor the hostile steps Loki took towards him. Even the man's dagger, which he had dashed out upon the sudden rustle to the trees, was slack in his palm. Loki could have snatched it up without incident, so he did, and he threw it towards a tree trunk over the hunter's shoulder. The whizzing of a blade so close to his ear awoke the dazed human and he drew his bow quickly, but not swiftly enough to string an arrow before Loki had him pinned against another tree with one of his own knives digging into the man's throat.

"Did you understand me, mortal?" He whispered, low and dangerous, and the man's eyes were blown with adrenaline and fear, and Loki smiled in the face of it. He pressed on the blade a little harder, and a line of red bloomed upon the pale skin.

"Do you understand?" He repeated, patience thinning quickly, and the man reacted to his voice then, nodding desperately, holding his breath so not to aggravate the dagger at his neck.

Loki released him then, putting space between them but refusing to turn his back. He would find it harder to stop an arrow at so short a distance if he wasn't looking at it.

"Who are you?" The man asked, noting, as he did when his tracking started, that this man was not human as he was.

Loki quickly weighed in his mind the idea of telling the truth, before dismissing it. What happened last time he was so foolish was still fresh in Loki's memories.

"Mattis." He introduced himself flawlessly, and Torgeir returned the favour. His blue eyes were locked steadily on Loki's green eyes, but he reacted unconsciously to each shift and twist the god's body made.

"Are you of the Vanir?" He wondered, and Loki chuckled.

"No, dear one," The god found humour in the slight flinch the hunter gave when Loki reached out to touch his face, but was intrigued by the way that, after his initial reaction, the human refused to shy away. Loki leaned in closer. "I am from a Vanir," he admitted, speaking of his mother Frigga, but not elucidating precisely enough for the human to puzzle out the truth.

The man was watching him with a delightful mix of fear and fascination. Loki observed, captivated, as the conflicting emotions fought behind his eyes.

"You're a strange one," he breathed, and Torgeir breathed with him.

They later became inseparable, quite especially after Loki had left and the human had pursued him. Loki, after initially wanting to be rid of the pest of a mortal, realised that once he had escaped the hunter's tracking, he was bored again. So, much without him meaning to, he found his way back to where Torgeir could follow him.

They quickly became obsessed with each other, and it was of no surprise when their relationship advanced and they fled together from Torgeir's dull village life to explore the unknown on the other side of the realm.

Loki lived quite happily in a hectic life with a wild human who couldn't for the life of him sit still. When Torgeir died with a few fellow strident townsmen from a bison attack, Loki's life ground to an abrupt halt. Having been so long with the brash, unrestrained and manic hunter, Loki hadn't been able to incorporate another into his life even just to comfort him when all he wanted was his lover returned to him.

He had returned to Asgard, as he usually did after such a tragedy, just to  be surrounded by men and women very much like Torgeir in every sense, bar the fact they were not him. Loki found that worse than the boredom, and soon returned to the dreariness of normal humans, much to his brother's mocking.

"You prefer them to us, Loki!" Thor once exclaimed loudly into the hall. "I did not realise how much of a human lover you were! I thought you were merely taking on pets!" Thor didn't understand, simply because Thor was more in the habit of keeping as far away from the perishable humans. Despite his idiocy, Loki's brother had a large heart, deep down, and he couldn't stand to grow attached just to lose someone. And, like Loki, he had a tendency to get attached quickly.

Loki, it seemed, dealt with losing them better, that was all. That was the difference between the two Odinsons.

\--

Loki found Mary in 1538, and, as much as he'd like to say his rushed relationship with her was not about forgetting his previous lover, it was. Mary was different from Torgeir in every way, and even though she would not know him for who he was, he called himself Stenar. She was Irish and taught him about Christianity. For her sake, he pretended to embrace it.

Eventually, though, it did become about Mary herself rather than forcefully willing away any recollections of loves past, and he settled into the monotonous routine Mary provided only by the knowledge she was there every day for him alone.

They spent much longer together than Loki had with Torgeir, which was likely to do with the way Mary didn't run off into the plains and provoke buffalos. It was forty-nine years until Mary caved to an illness Loki couldn't protect her from, and as she faded away he sat by her bedside, talking to her and throwing off the illusion of age he'd taken to shrouding himself with. Though the sick woman thought his young face but a hallucination produced in her dying mind, she still took the time to tell him how beautiful he'd always been.

He had long since grown used to mourning his human lovers, and his brother oftentimes queried why exactly Loki insisted on falling in love with people who had so short a lifespan. Loki would answer that this time was the last time, and for a while he would even mean it. And then he'd return to Midgard and see the progress they'd made, or the terrible blunders, and he'd be invited into an ale house or a tavern or an inn or a pub and he'd find that one human who took his breath away.

And then he'd lose them, and return to Asgard for a while until he once again grew bored and started to travel. And then he'd find someone new, not necessarily human and not necessarily mortal, but they'd always been torn away from him and the cycle would start over again.

\--

In 1687 Loki found himself inexplicably drawn back to America. It had been one hundred years since Mary had died and he'd returned to mourn, for he hadn't taken on a human lover since. He found tracing the track to the grave harder than he recalled, since Midgard always changed so quickly and so dramatically, especially with the settlements cropping up everywhere as the humans populated and spread.

He found where he lay Mary to rest very close to a small town - she was upon the hill and when he perched next to her he had a clear view through the trees of the several small houses and communal fire-pits in the centre of the roughly circular outline.

He watched the little community bustle for a while, before saying goodbye to Mary for the final time with a white flower picked from Iðunn's own garden. He then stood silently and swiftly approached the village.

He did not enter but simply watched, having placed a protective charm around the gravesite of his wife so no mortal would taint its sanctity, and it was only when he turned to leave that someone paid him any attention.

Without this mortal woman running headfirst into him he would have escaped the area without being spotted. However, due to neither of them paying attention to their surroundings, Loki managed to throw a young girl to the floor.

"Watch where you're going!" She snapped, standing up and gathering together the collected dry wood from the forest which she'd dropped as she'd fallen.

Loki smirked down at her struggling form, not offering help to the child who was perhaps just turning nineteen. "Hurry home, little one," he said lowly, and something in his tone paralysed her muscles with fear. Loki continued. "Mustn't let those fire burn low, else Jökul Frosti will steal you away as you sleep." It was simply an old expression, born of an ancient winter spirit long since vanished.

"Jökul Frosti?" She asked, but to her it appeared as if suddenly there was no one there. Loki had drawn a spell of invisibility around himself and was watching her a few feet away from where she crouched. Her terrified face made him laugh.

"Demon," she whispered, crossing herself and praying in broken Latin, blessing her soul clean of the taint of evil. She had no need; she was as innocent and pure as the freshly lain snow, but she was so ridiculously scared that Loki had stolen that from her that he had to chuckle.

She wouldn't speak to another about what she'd seen, lest she be believed to be possessed and exorcised, and that was all Loki needed to pick a target for his newest bout of mischief.

\--

Her name was Abigail and she was the oldest daughter of a Christian farmer named Jackson Abell. Her family had moved with the town, migrated from western Europe, and had settled here in hopes of better prospects. So far, they didn't seem to be finding any.

Loki appeared in the night to haunt her, leaving her only subtle signs of his presence, and each day she grew more fearful of the 'demon' she had attracted. He never dispelled her notions, because her religion was what made the game fun, and her fear, not just of him, but what her peers would do if they believed she was being visited by Satan, was what kept Loki's amusement alive.

Eventually, one full moon when the town was silent, she snuck out of the window early morning and ran to the nearby lake to greet him.

It was frozen over and the girl ran straight into the middle of it. He took to believe that she hadn't immediately noticed, as her face was streaming with tears and her screaming voice pierced through the night.

"Leave me alone!" She begged, weak with fear and shaking in the cold. "In God's name, leave me!" She had brought her rosary beads with her, wrapped tightly around her hand, and she tried to banish him with incantations she'd heard from the priests, and prayers she'd been taught. She asked the sky why her, what had she done wrong, whilst Loki perched gaily in a tree, watching the destruction he'd wrought and realising for the first time what he was doing to this girl.

He dropped from the tree and approached her, and she screamed out when she saw him. She threw her  beads at him, cursed his name, backed away, and it wasn't until it was too late that he noticed the cracks in the ice.

"Stop!" He tried to tell her, but talking as he had, so unexpectedly and loud, only startled her further back and her weight proved to be more than the ice could manage. Loki darted forward and lashed out without thinking, grabbing her by her wrist and yanking her away, towards him.

She looked up at him, still scared but now also confused. Her breath was clear before her and she was inappropriately dressed for her venture outside. She would have been killed by the shock of the cold water had she fallen beneath the ice.

She scrambled away from him seconds later, seeming to realise what position she was in and breaking the tension to get to safety.

"Why did you do that?" She managed to ask when her confusion won out over her fear.

Loki, putting about an air of indifference even when feeling nothing of the sort, simply shrugged and stalked closer to where she stood, now on the less tentatively frozen earth.

"If you died, who would be there for me to torment?"

" _Why_ are you doing this?" She demanded again, a reiteration of her previous cries to the sky, and her tears still weren't completely dry upon her face. Mindlessly, Loki reached out to wipe one away.

"I'm bored." He admitted, because there was only so much mischief one could get up to in Asgard before  he was accused of something horrendous and made to serve out an equally dire punishment, guilty or no.

Midgard was a safe place to lay low for a while until his peers calmed their tempers, and he'd always found something remarkable here among the humans. Poor little Abigail had simply been unfortunate enough to catch his attention first.

"You're bored?" She echoed, dumbfounded  by his answer, and he nodded, gesturing his hand vaguely.

"You're interesting," he found himself saying, much without his permission. "And I like interesting."

Abigail _was_ interesting, much in the same way all Loki's previous obsessions had been. As Mary had been kind and Torgeir had been strong, Abigail was brave; brave to deal with him alone, brave to confront him, brave to question him, especially when she believed him to be a demon.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the trickster," he smiled, and she believed that instantly. She backed away from him slowly, still scared no matter how brave she tried to be, and ran back to the relative safety of her home.

Loki was not completely surprised when he followed her back to the lake the second night, though this time she was careful not to mindlessly run onto the ice.

"Who are you?" She kept on asking, at first to the trees and then to Loki himself when he deigned to stop chuckling on the wind or leading her on false trails with a spark of magic.

When she finally managed to find his hiding spot - high up in an ancient tree - he told her his name was Loki, which was the first time he'd introduced himself as such since before the prophecies came through.

Abigail didn't believe he wasn't a demon for a great many months, no matter how many times he managed to lie away his magic by pretending they were naught but silly tricks, but slowly she came to realise he wasn't attempting to tempt her into evil and it was then, five months into their acquaintance, that Loki realised he wasn't about to leave her behind. He wasn't going to leave her at all, in fact. The time had come for him to introduce himself to this little town, and for him to start to make her realise she had fallen in love with him as well.

\--

They married in 1688 and he and her father and brothers built the two of them a small cabin at the edge of the town. They were next door to her parents, but safely away from the curious, mistrusting eyes of the more suspicious of villagers. That was less to do with Abigail and completely to do with Loki. It was unsurprising: he was a newcomer into their community whom no one really knew and therefore trust wasn't at the forefront of anyone's minds. Each individual here had a history with everyone else in the town, and a new face was as good as an enemy in their midst.

"They'll learn to accept you eventually," Jackson assured him, despite the fact Loki knew the man didn't completely have confidence in him either. Loki could hear it from the human's tongue every time the father of his bride spoke to him.

Abigail herself had long since given up on the grudge she'd sworn she would carry around in revenge for his attempting to scare her half to death when they first met. It hadn't taken long once she realised how much she'd grown to adore him, and how much he couldn't stand the day without her.

\--

When Abigail fell pregnant, Loki felt that familiar elation he could trace all the way back to Angrboda telling him of the conception of Fenrir, along with the spike of gut-wrenching fear, because none of his children so far were still with him today. That was a feeling he knew more intimately, as it had been the first thing he felt when he'd come to his senses those many hundreds of years ago and found Sleipnir sniffing him warily, unused to the body his mother was now inhabiting.

In 1692, Abigail gave him a son and insisted upon the name Jackson, after her father.

"Your name is not very Christian." She informed Loki, and she was correct.

"I didn't know there was a Jackson in the bible." He returned snidely, stroking his son's flash of dark hair and ignoring his wife's flush of indignation, but he didn't disagree with the name. God knows Angrboda had wanted to call his children worse things.

"He looks just like you." He kissed her forehead.

And Jackson did. With brown hair and brown eyes, the boy had definitely taken after his mother's side. Loki supposed that it was a good thing: his own features drew too much unwanted attention to his family, and there were often unholy whispers hissed from the more fanatical of believers about him and those whom he associated with.

Loki spent the first few years of Jack's life paranoid that something would split him from his child, but as the years eased by, each easier than the last, Loki slowly let his guard slip, realising nothing was coming from the heavens to tear tiny Jack away.

Jack was five when he first panicked the entire town by making them believe a vengeful ghost was after them with brilliant trickery. It took them three days to realise who was really behind the eerie happenings, and only Loki had known the truth from the beginning. He'd encouraged it, in fact. Abigail had scolded them both, but little Jack's giggling proved to be too persuasive an argument and she only huffed and sent them both away from her sight for an evening. Father and son had gone to the lake to play whilst Jack's mother calmed down.

His pranks turned increasingly elaborate when Jack realised how eager his father was to join in and how proud Loki was in his ingenuity. Soon enough Abigail constantly had an earful for the two of them, a well practised rant they came to know by heart, and the town started to curse their name for the more mischievous of unfortunate  happenings to occur in the peaceful village of Burgess.

And then little Emma was added into the mix. Jack had not liked her at all.

He had stubbornly insisted on that dislike for a several months, at least when the adults could see him, right up until Emma started to totter around and began clinging to Jack like a lifeline. Loki let himself be replaced as his son's partner in crime when Emma showed signs of wanting to join in.

They also always, _always_  wanted to play around the lake which was so close to their home. This was not a surprise due to the amount of times their parents took them there when they were young. It was eventually dubbed by the town as the spot of the Lokisons (Abigail wasn't opposed to Loki's idea of traditional the surname scheme, but she put her foot down at Lokidóttir, wanting her children to at least share a surname). Other children went to play there as well, but only in the hope they could be drawn into the mischief Jack Lokison was involving himself in that day.

Even in the dead of winter, Loki's two delicate offspring demanded to be allowed to play at the lake when the sun started to peak out of the dark clouds.

"Don't go out on the ice." Loki told them both sternly, as he had ever year for as long as Jack had been autonomous. "It's never fully frozen. Certainly not enough to hold you both up."

The children never listened, especially since Abigail didn't agree with her husband's instructions. She seemed not to remember when they first met, back when she herself had almost fallen in.

Loki vociferously maintained he wasn't paranoid and that his fears were legitimate. Abigail scoffed over his worrying, sometimes even finding it endearing.

"I don't see much caring from you, husband," she took to telling him. "So I have to take what I'm given."

"There's no such thing as too much safety." He'd reply like clockwork, watching out the window as his children set off for the frozen waters.

\--

Loki had made the staff for his son when Jack showed signs of weakening within his leg. He hadn't been very old when the troubles started, and Loki saw it as a blessing where his wife had fretted. He could fix it, after all.

Infused in the staff were great wells of Loki's magic, bled into it nightly as Loki worked by candlelight whilst his family slept, meticulously carved out rough grooves which would help direct the power through the entirety of the staff. Magic was like a river, and it needed a path to flow through. It helped him walk, and eventually healed him completely without drawing any attention to themselves. Abigail saw it as an act of god, and prayed with such resounding thankfulness that it almost offended Loki, the true saviour of their son.

Jack had always admired the skill his father showed when fighting with a spear, and so the shape of one of Loki's favoured weapons was echoed in Jack's gift. With the hook Loki carved upon the end of Jack's staff Jack could defend, protect, attack and reach out to anything he wanted.

He was so small and it seemed so large, and he received it Loki thought he'd misjudged. However, Jack took to it like a fish to the water. Soon enough he could cause great mischief with it in hand. Many of their neighbours started shooting Loki dirty looks when Jack's pranks grew all the more crafty after the fact. Abigail had likewise taken to smacking the back of her husband's hand like a child, since every time sweet cakes went missing from the top shelf she knew whose fault it was.

Eventually Jack grew into his staff, as his body shot up and he finally started to take after his father. His lean stature and soon to be daunting height had some of the uglier rumours about Jack's parentage shot straight to Hel.

"I always knew he was yours." Jackson nodded to Loki, somewhere around that time. There was lying then, too.

\--

In 1710, Loki found himself at the most relaxed he'd been since before his very first visit to Midgard, over a couple of thousand years ago.

He'd been absent one day, on a hunt with his wife's family in order to save the stocks for the coming winter months which would grow ever worse. At least at this time of year, despite the biting freeze to the air, there were still some animals roaming.

Loki had been forced out on Abigail's insistence, as she'd finally grown wise to the negative feelings brewing between the men in her family. She wanted them to bond, so had told her father and brothers, with no room for argument, that her husband would be joining them for the annual hunt; something Loki did not usually participate in. The god spent a lot of the hunt daydreaming creative ways of murdering his father-in-law and making it seem like an accident. By the time the sun reached its midday peak, he was up to nineteen. If not for the thought of Abigail's tears, Loki would have killed Jackson a long time prior.

Loki deliberately didn't take part in the winter hunt for several reasons: the first being that it was a tradition in this community which had passed down through the generations. Father taught son, son grew up with it, son becomes father, and teaches own son. If Loki suddenly decided to join in, he'd be among the midst of three generations in five different families which could trace their roots all the way back to across the seas together. Loki Odinson, no matter how many years he spent living with them, would always remain an outsider - he was also someone many still didn't completely trust. Loki didn't blame them.

Another reason avoided it was that Loki was an apt hunter. More than that, he was a _very_ apt hunter. It came from being a god with too many years at his back having spent most of those years with warriors and hunters. To Loki, these men in their calm lives and daily jobs were not hunters and never would be until they had been forced into days of starvation after being chased to an isolated but barren safe-spot by a monstrous beast on an alien realm. Loki himself had done that far too many times to recall all of them accurately. They were all mostly his brother's fault.

Similarly, Loki was too good a tracker and too good a killer. Should he not take care in his movements, his already suspicious neighbours would see his supernatural speed, agility and strength and wrongly associate it in much the same way Abigail had in the beginning. They'd take it out on his family, and the cycle would start again.

Loki was not eager to go back to his old routine, as he never was, but now with children to think of he was more than determined to cease what had become his unfortunate pattern.

Largely, however, Loki had never joined because he had never been asked. It was uncomfortable to be around these people when his wife had been the one to strong-armed her own father into agreeing.

They'd broken away back home not far into the afternoon, when Jackson and his oldest son James started to butt heads like rams. Loki had not been the one to break up the fight between the two hot-heads, if only because he had been enjoying the vindictive spat far too much, but rather it had been Abigail's youngest brother Abe that had proven to be the hero.

"We'll come back tomorrow," he said as calmly as he could manage, pushing his father and his brother away from where they had gotten into each other's faces. "Perhaps the ice will have thawed." Unlikely, but they could always hope. Loki didn't hold preference either way, ice or no - he'd never let any of his families starve when he'd always had the means to fight the elements.

He had come hope to find Abigail in the kitchen, humming a merry little tune to herself whilst she worked around the house. He'd wrapped his arms around her from behind, drawing her close and spinning her round. She laughed gaily, clinging to his arms, letting him have his games.

And then they heard Emma screaming as she ran crying through the town.

\--

In 1710, Loki lost his son, and he was determined to fight every element, every god, every realm and every being in an attempt to get him back.

Loki couldn't even find him.

\--

In 1725, Loki lost his wife. More for his own sake than Emma's, Loki had long since put on a mask of age and so could pretend to die not long after. Emma had a husband now, and children of her own, and she hadn't needed her father in a long, long time. Loki returned to Asgard and watched down on his tiny girl right up until the moment she herself died, old and creaky and surrounded by great-grandchildren, far into her nineties. A much higher age expectancy than a usual human, perhaps, but what else could be expected from the daughter of a god?

Emma went to Helheim and was reunited with her mother. Loki went to see them both when his oldest daughter allowed it, simply to say goodbye properly and to explain everything to them, including where Jack was. And that had been the hardest part of the conversation; in comparison, telling his Christian wife he was actually pagan god had been made to seem easy.

He'd been forced to tell them, _I don't know where Jack is_ , his wife looking on betrayed and both his daughters watching him, judging him. "I'll get him back," he promised, but he had no idea when, or how. He just would. He'd tear the world apart for him, as he would for all of them.

\--

And then there was Jökul Frosti, the spirit which had tormented him since the day his son died. Loki didn't know what he'd done to incur the spirit's wrath, but the spirit had more than earned his.

He'd known the spirit before fairly well back in Scandinavia. Jökul Frosti haunted his windows many nights, painting on the greenery with his pretty pictures.

In towns across from him, the spirit had taken lives. He hadn't meant to, Loki knew, as the bringer of the winter was a harmless sort with naught but a paintbrush to arm himself with against the world, but his art brought consequences, and humans were really much too delicate.

Loki had been under the impression he'd died many years ago; the weight of his actions taking their toll on the gentle creature.

In the time since then, Frosti had obviously learnt to hate.

\--

The first time he showed up at Loki's window had been merely hours after his return from Helheim, whilst Loki had still been shaking with anger at the conversation with his daughter and weak with his grief.

Loki, for some deluded reason, had briefly entertained the notion the spirit he was feeling hadn't been Jökul Frosti at all - he certainly hadn't felt like the ancient creature he'd once known. Rather, the presence was more familiar, and as he had reached out it almost felt like it had reached back.

But nothing had happened. Even though Loki, nor anyone else for that matter, had never been able to see spirits, the god had always been able to feel them. But it had been different for Jökul Frosti - he was the one being which escaped Loki's touch, as he eluded everyone else's.

So it was true - Jökul Frosti was laughing at his window on the very same day he stole Loki's son from him.

Loki closed the window on him with a snap, furiously sending out magic to chase the spirit when the window flew open again with a flurry of snow. By then, however, Frosti had gone.

\--

The second time they met, Loki had been in England, observing the Frost Fair. He'd been distracted enough by the new sights, smells and sounds, along with the constant niggling terror about so many people, adults and children and elephants alike, tromping over the same piece of ice, that he hadn't noticed the presence of Jökul Frosti until he had once again fled.

"Coward." Loki spat into the wind, before leaving the fair completely in a fit of disgust.

It had been masochistic to come here, back to Midgard. Even as far as he was away from Burgess, it still was not far enough. When he'd seen the river frozen over from his temporary home in London, it had only been his self-hatred which had led him out onto the ice. A vain hope that maybe today might be the day he'd find his child.

_Perhaps if I fall in, he'll be waiting for me._

A crack in the ice and a dip into the freezing depth would not kill Loki. He certainly wouldn't enjoy it, but he didn't enjoy not knowing where his children were, either. He still hadn't found Fenrir, and each year ticked on like a prison sentence for every time he failed to reunite the children to the father.

Jörmungandr, he was beginning to suspect, didn't want to be found. But then, Jörmungandr had greater freedom than Fenrir in the seemingly endless seas of Midgard. He wasn't going to give up on them.

His little, delicate Jackson was simply a mystery. At least he knew Fenrir was out there to be found, somewhere, and he heard the humans tell tales of Jörmungandr in his many various disguises.

From the Aspidochelone to the Yacumama, Loki's son had taken on so numerous an amount of masks that sometimes even Loki forgot what the boy had once looked like. Loki, in all his years travelling in Midgard, had only accidentally come across his second banished son once when the boy had lured the sailors on Loki's travelling ship to their deaths with a cover of feminine beauty which no one but Loki had seen through. Since then, Jörmungandr had gone far out of his way to avoid his father like the plague.

Jackson, unlike his other two sons, had simply vanished. Loki feared for him, deeper than he feared even for Fenrir. So terrified was he of his youngest son's fate that he was looking for someone to direct his vehemence towards who could be blamed for this terrible rage building steadily inside of him. That someone would prove to be the same creature which stole Jack from him in the first place.

\--

He finally faced Jökul Frosti when Loki shook himself free of a daze and realised that it wasn't his son he was reaching out to, it simply felt like it. His magic wrapped around the invisible presence in the same way as it had done Jack, and the aura which washed over him was rich with the warm memories of his happy family; a life of which he'd given up once and for all as soon as Abigail had died. He knew it wasn't Jack, but his senses wanted to tell him otherwise. Another cruel game, no doubt. 

He found himself questioning the presence nevertheless, breathless with hope that perhaps he'd been wrong, but without any answer from the spirit Loki's fury welled up and he quickly backed away.

This was not his son, he reminded himself, nor a long-forgotten friend from a time since past. This was the creature which so heinously ripped his family apart, which was then so swift to laugh at Loki's misfortune.

"Leave me be, Frosti, else face my wrath!" He snarled, blindly shooting in an approximate direction when his previous warning had been left unheeded. He wanted to hurt, and he certainly wanted to kill, but he had no idea where to aim and knew, as he felt a gust of wind fly and his windows shutter in the spirit's wake, that he had missed his target.

Loki watched the children play in the streets below and how they were completely blind to the dangerous creature hovering beside them. He wondered if Jack had lookd as innocent as that before he died. Dispassionately, Loki questioned which ignorant child would be the next to fall victim to the winter spectre.

\--

He hadn't meant to return to Burgess, not ever again, even in all the many years he left to live. He had lived too long here - his home with Mary had been close by, and he still knew the exact spot he'd inhabited with Abigail - and in it held too many memories. Even now, after years of modifications and advancements, the unmarked graves of Loki's loved ones had been left strictly alone. Loki protected those areas with ancient and lasting enchantments, which would tirelessly wear on even after Loki himself had withered away to nothing. The humans wouldn't notice, but when did they ever?

The mortals were mid-way through the 20th century now, having survived horrendous things in these past years and waiting with baited breath for more to come. Loki had not been here since the end of the 1800s, and was really rather glad of it.

He'd returned now on a whim, just to see the destruction the humans had raged upon each other and to varify the rumours about the new evils the humans had thought up.

Up in Asgard there had been much talk around the great tables. Some said the humans were barbarians, for murdering each other for petty reasons was the behaviour of savages. Others said this was not atypical of the humans and merely a natural progression of what they had done for thousands of years, simply expanded to extreme proportions by the sheer amount of humans now writhing around on so small a realm.

They all turned to Loki then, asking the human-lover for his opinion. Loki personally believed himself biased, since he hadn't loved a human for over two-hundred years, but he was the only one in Asgard who had a mind which processed such quick change (a habit picked up on Midgard), and for all his fellows cared, if he had loved humans two-hundred years ago then nothing would have changed since then. Nothing did for them.

Loki hadn't been able to to tell them who was right, regardless. As far as he was concerned, he'd seen humanity up close, and experienced life as they saw it too much too well. He had, as the humans said, gone native. Numerous times. Despite himself. 

He was  _biased_. 

To him, the humans were neither barbarians, nor simply generally violent. They were people, like any Æsir, albeit smaller, weaker and significantly more short-lived. If they had wars, then Asgard had no right to criticise them. After all, the Æsir prophecies stated only warriors went to paradise, simply so they could prepare to fight in a final great war (headed, said the malicious future-seers, by the spiteful god Loki). Those men and women calling the humans so cruel and unfeeling had only look towards themselves to see a spitting image of humanity lurking within.

When the second of the devastating wars on Midgard had been reported to be over, Loki had gone back to the realm out of idle curiosity. It was not any feeling such as nostalgia, nor sadness that humanity had suffered so greatly, he would swear that to his very deathbed, but rather that he believed half the stories he'd heard to be falsehoods despite the slight ring of truth to them, and therefore he wished to investigate.

He'd felt sick upon discovering too many were true, but it wasn't the first time this realm had faced horrors like these, nor would it likely be the last. Loki had been exposed to worse stories about other realms when he had been growing up; his father would read those tales to him and his brother when they were but boys.

The difference, perhaps, was that the people on those realms didn't die quite so easily. They were much more capable of enduring.

The one thing that Loki could not call the humans out upon, however, was their forgiving memory. Hardly a generation would pass before they would all misplace their memories, and already, despite the fact they were not forgetting per say, the mortals were certainly smoothing over their wounds and healing with great speed. Had such a war happened on another realm, the two sides would take thousands upon thousands of years to come to even a tentative peace. Just look at Asgard and Jötunheim, who had a treaty but were not yet on their way to so much as accepting each other. Yet, by contrast, the humans were already starting to look one another in the eye once again.

He realised he had gravitated towards Burgess only as he was approaching his final destination. In his mind's eye, it was almost like looking up and suddenly just _being_ there. It was disconcerting, but perhaps precisely what he needed. The comfort of his once-home, no matter what pain it brought, was a reliable safety-net to cling to whilst he was still adjusting to the rapid changes the humans had made to their realm in his absence.

Or perhaps fate had led him here, which he came to consider as his feet led him to the lake and there, almost as if waiting for him, was that achingly familiar presence, which Loki had to remind himself was not his son.

Until, as it turned out, it was.

Anger fled from him as heat fled from Jötunheim when the spirit whom he'd so readily believed was Jökul Frosti turned out to be simply called _Jack Frost_.

Loki would have assumed it was simply a modernisation of the name had it not been for the creature's previous comment: _Who are you?_

"Don't you know me?" Loki had asked, bewildered, to which the winter ghost had returned: _Should I?_

Yes, Jökul Frosti should. Jökul Frosti _would_. Jökul Frosti always had. He would visit Loki and his family specifically for the company, because Loki had learnt when he was very young that he did not feel cold as others did, and Angrboda and his children were made of thicker stuff than the average Yggdrasil dweller. Troll hides were built for resisting even the most biting of weather.

This spirit, he realised therefore, could not be Jökul Frosti.

"My son was called Jack," Loki whispered to the wind, realising all at once his misconceptions. A wave of icy guilt flushed through him like a blizzard had hit, and he stared out blankly, vacantly, into the trees. His son had never disappeared at all. Even on that first day, when Loki had lost him to these very same frozen depths, Jack had found his way home.

It had been Loki who'd lost him when Loki misunderstood. It had been Loki who'd chased his son away.

A coldness spread from his shoulder down his arm, but it couldn't snap Loki out of his shameful daze. Nevertheless, he managed to move his hand - was able to finally reach out and touch where he definitively knew his son to be for the first time in 250 years.

"I'm so sorry." He said into the air a long time after the spirit of Jackson Lokison had vanished from his side.

\---

And then came the time when Loki pulled himself together forcibly, stood from his freezing vigil and called out to the gatekeeper.

"I found him." He told his mother when he arrived home, and she embraced him joyously. She, of course, had never managed to meet her two half-human grandchildren, though she always seemed wistful at the idea of it.

"I'm glad." Frigga replied, smiling gently and noting the happiness on Loki's face for the first time in too long an age, no matter how resigned it seemed.

"He doesn't remember me." Loki noted, and Frigga took his hands in hers, rubbing her thumbs gently against the back of his hand.

"Death will do that to a person," she reminded him gently, and he nodded, overwhelmed by emotion as if the realisation of his son's discovery, at long last, had just wholly hit him. She took him in her arms again and rocked him to either side whilst he shook.

"He doesn't remember me," he repeated mildly with no room for tears as shock had him caught deep in his bones. 

"He will," she soothed, as confidently as she could be in so uncertain a situation. "He will."

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I realise that in making Loki love Earth I don't make the Avengers plotline make much sense. To be fair, reading over the mythology, I really think he did like Earth a lot. I've got my own theories as to why Loki attacked Earth in the Avengers, and though before this story I'd never really incorporated a previous love of Midgard into it, my theory doesn't definitively rule out the possibility. 
> 
> I am planning on another story for this series (it's far too addictive to write), though whether or not I fully explain what I think is going on in Loki's head during the Avengers depends on which point of view I base it from. Likely it'll be from Jack's, which means that if there is any explanation at all it'll be halting, confusing and most likely modified, as it'll be what Loki says rather than what he thinks. 
> 
> Also, Jack is easier to write than Loki. Everyone is easier to write than Loki.


End file.
